Saturday 9:15pm,
Rest of the week 9pm,
ITV
It’s back for a week of specials for the 20th anniversary (i.e. it’s a sly pilot) and it’s got a new host in the divisive Jeremy Clarkson. But Millionaire is back, whether anyone really gives a damn or not.
Also back: the 15 question money tree and by the sounds of it the original Strachan music score. The set looks very pretty (I was worried the video floor was a bit too eye-popping but it feels much better in that context). There’s a new Ask the Host lifeline, and contestants will set their own second safety net which may or may not lead to some interesting decisions. I hope it makes the show a bit less predictable.
Whether this show lives or dies beyond this week depends on, I suspect, a willingness to give the impression it’s OK with giving serious cash away, If they’ve made the questions so hard everyone stops at eight- or sixteen-thousand everyone’s going to get bored very quickly, excitement over the hosting choice or not.
Tom H wrote this is a previous thread, literally whilst I was writing the post for WWTBAM so it made more sense to repost it here:
I know Buzzerblog has shared a couple of pictures of the new Millionaire set, but there’s a seven-minute video of The Sun’s Andy Halls playing the game on a press preview junket here:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/6206281/jeremy-clarkson-talks-millionaire-host-pressures/
The takeaways:
– The set is extremely impressive, although hopefully it feels a bit less cavernous with an audience in there. As Jeremy points out in the accompanying interview, he does seem quite a distance from the contestant.
– Jeremy seemed to be a little unsure of himself at the start of that video, but he may have been taking things slightly less seriously given he was playing to the press.
– The lighting’s had a fairly major overhaul – the effect on the overhead gantry when a question’s answered correctly is nice.
– The original in-game music’s been resurrected, although one of the cues sounded off. New cues for Ask the Host.
– Shame they didn’t revert to Conduit for the questions and have stuck with Verdana. Money tree still in Copperplate Gothic.
It _looks_ excellent and should be worth watching. JC has enough persona to bridge the gap between sincere and good-humoured. The Ask the Host lifeline proves what we were all thinking: High Stakes was unappreciated televisual genius years ahead of its time.
There is a mistake with the music in that they’ve incorrectly used the “lights down” cue of the next question (the key change should happen on the next question reveal). It’s a small detail but like the redundant leading 0 on the Crystal Maze revival clock, a diehard notices these things and doesn’t forgive.
Good luck to them.
I think it’s a very interesting interview as well, but I hope the questions aren’t of those levels on the actual show, they should be a bit higher up the chain I reckon. I’d have struggled with Gumbo, although I knew South Korea.
There still appear to be cheques!
Some footage of last week’s technical runthrough (with an audience) in this package from Granada Reports:
http://www.itv.com/news/granada/update/2018-05-04/itvs-who-wants-to-be-a-millionaire-is-back-with-a-new-host-in-the-hot-seat/
It’s a very interesting dilemma for ITV, they need to get the show moving past the stage it hit in the final years where pretty much everyone bailed at £20,000 but at the same time probably can’t afford to be giving 6 figure sums away as much as they used to be able to, since they’re now auditioning online vs. a premium rate telephone number,and they can also almost manufacture the outcome of shows by auditioning the potential contestants!
I think Channel 4 have got the right idea by taking one of their well known primetime formats and just trying it in daytime with a lower prize on offer (£!00k drop), didn’t ITV plan to have a ’50/50′ daytime show at some point that never happened?
ITV my have had an option on it, but I don’t think it was going to happen here – it didn’t do well in countries that took it IIRC.
Did people even get to £20k in the late years? A lot of them didn’t. Certainly the 2008 taping I went to had two who didn’t make it that far, one of whom would have crashed out on the £5k question if audience gasps hadn’t inadvertently led her out of a wrong answer (it really is incredibly difficult to stay silent when you know someone’s about to blow thousands of pounds!).
To be fair, we’re basically back to pre-Millionaire standards with primetime game show prizes now, aren’t we?
The last time members of the public played was The People Play specials in 2013. 2/11 players won £20k. No one won more.
http://millionaire.wikia.com/wiki/Series_30_(UK)
The previous year saw 3/ 8 contestants reach the £50k mark and everyone winning at least £10k.
http://millionaire.wikia.com/wiki/Series_29_(UK)
Out of interest, what would people think is an ‘okay’ median value to be giving away? It’s a bit trickier with the mobile safety net, because I’d always thought “32k-with-a-one-in-four-chance-of-£64k-with-no-risk”was *about* right, but if people are too cautious with the safety net the ‘free chance of doubling’ might come a bit earlier – and if people are too risky with it we may be seeing more dropping down to £1k.
Who Wants To Be A Millionaire: Poor Font Choices Edition
First 10 min thoughts:
Clarkson is really good in the host seat, but not that great on autocue, which he said he used for the first time, so that’s understandable.
Studio is astonishing, lighting as well. Font for the money ladder kills my eyes. Contestant using their lifeline on £200 is absolutely pathetic.
I dont think Clarkson is that good. Sarcastic patronising and verging on insulting.
Worth noting that the sentiment on Clarkson from Twitter seemed pretty much tied to how much the contestant annoyed them.
Clarkson is always going to fit a bit better as a “heel” than a “face,” as it were, and you can definitely make good television with a heel hosting a game show. But it might not be *this* game show.
Now, Clarkson hosting a Weakest Link revival, that would suit him a lot more unequivocally.
Feels a bit too antagonistic, honestly I’d compare him to Ayoade’s Mazemaster.
What an actual f are these contestants and questions.
The font on the money tree is just dreadful. How could anyone sign that off?
This quite literally doesn’t make any sense – as in that preview video I posted from The Sun, they were using Copperplate Gothic!
https://ibb.co/dDMmPS
So did someone simply forget to render the graphics and they went with it, or was it a proactive decision?
Exactly right, it is correct on the Sun preview. Have they run into last minute font licensing issues, or is this that weird thing that happened on The Cube that one time and they’ve left a pre-production version of the graphics in the whole edit?
The fiddling of the character sizes suggests it was all carefully put together and then ruined by a senior ego at the last second.
Even then, why Arial (!) of all things? Not even Verdana…
This has been thrown together by people who clearly cannot have appreciated the original as much as the (up to) 19 million they are trying to win back did.
Crikey, OK. The big question regarding question difficulty and placement not really answered very well here, not helped by the contestants (spleen), but clearly some of the questions are clearly not in the right place – B9 is not a £4k question and certainly a couple of the others gave me cause for concern Nike is knowable but not that low, suspect it’s very easy to have missed what show Meghan Markle starred in, certainly felt more like £2k than £300. People are not going to stay for that.
The set is lovely, but the graphics look pretty horrible to be honest. The blue is too bright, the font choices are *horrible*. I think TV Production has clearly lost the art of theatricality, just throwing any old thing up with some extra lights and going ‘will that do?’
Enjoyed Clarkson as expected, a bit of antagonism is to be expected (otherwise why choose Clarkson?) but clearly he wanted them to win. There is no way there’s any need to keep in asking the milestone question, mention it at £1,000, ask the question then edit it out until they actually use it.
Anyway everyone who works in television on Twitter were getting very excited so it must be good. The reality is it’ll do 5m off the back of Got Talent and Clarkson, it won’t hold on to it unless improves quickly, which it won’t.
It’s not completly awful or anything, but as one of the most important shows of the modern era it should be a bit better than ‘a bit disappointing’.
£2k question should be “fair chance any one contestant won’t know it, but very little chance ATA won’t come through,” and if memory serves they were quite often pop culture questions. The Meghan Markle question is pretty much textbook £2k, and if they’re putting it in at £300 and seemingly having every other question pop up three questions too early, they clearly want people to lose.
Now, a Nintendo Hard game show with Jeremy Clarkson snarking through it isn’t an inherently terrible concept for a new format. Except of course this isn’t a new format but a revival of one of the most iconic game shows of all time.
I will give it another chance but that was a pretty dodgy start, the on screen graphics sucked, the music was all over the place and Jeremy’s screen was shown to be pitch black at one stage doing the ‘bank transfer’ (a cheque may be old fashioned but looks so much more effective on TV!).
Fastest Finger First was a bit weird too highlighting the correct punters and only then showing their times in a Grand Tour style way, and they TOTALLY screwed up my favourite bit when the contestant is wrong or calls it a day, why was there no ‘Total Prize Money’ caption other than the amount shown on the screen behind and for gods sake we don’t need their family and friends waiting for them in the tunnel!
Once it got past the first contestant things improved slightly in terms of the pacing, but they’ve definitely been keeping the purse strings tightly shut, some of the £100 – £1000 questions alone felt they were more suited for £1,000 – £32,000 and as for the vitamin question…also some of the questions felt cleverly designed to easily trip up on, and Millionaire is supposed to be known for no trick questions!
I quite liked Clarkson though, his humour was good but it might be a bit weird after this special week of shows. I also think they need to stick a time limit for him to waffle on during Ask The Host! Naturally they had to stick in the HILARIOUS traditional Millionaire out take of the contestant choosing EE voice mail as their phone a friend.
Adding to the impression of things being slightly haphazard…on the front page of the ITV Player:
https://ibb.co/mu7UTn
5.06m/29.7% for episode one, pretty much bang on prediction.
Christ I wished this didn’t feel like such a half-arsed production, Jeremy Clarkson is single-handedly saving this.
Quite enjoyed the argument in Twitter as to whether the Stop sign question was a gimme at £32k or a legitimately hard question.
It definitely belongs on (what used to be the) second tier, and I’ve no idea where. Of course, the way it played out suggests it did belong at £32k!
It didn’t really happen on the first episode, but I’m really liking how Ask The Host can be a *dialogue*; you can bounce ideas and thoughts off him rather than just him talking his way around one answer.
That stop sign clip just showed up in my Youtube recommendations.
Was… that supposed to be a hard question…? Like, I legitimately thought it was a joke promo video or something at first.
3.8m 22% I’m reading for ep 2. Down over a million but still within expectations I think. Will be interesting to see where it settles.
Given the conditions last night that seems OK. Grew quite sharply across the hour to peak at 4.5m/26% at the end. I reckon they’ll look to hit 4m again tonight though with it being a work night.
Is this made by a new team?
The question levels don’t seem to be set right, music bed under answers is awful and font on money tower is absolutely dreadful.
So we’re on a path that numbers probably will do decent enough to get a second run later. Assuming this is the case – do people think it being stripped again like this, vs a weekly show, would be better/more likely for you to watch?
I think stripped gives a nice event feel, it’s working in favour of this and makes me pay attention to it being on, but I may also be weird and filling an hour a week is probably preferable to ITV.
Feels like the questions are getting closer to their natural positions.
But… I’m also getting a bit tired, Clarkson or no Clarkson.
And then just as I post that Friend of The Bar Chris B gets in the Hot Seat, which I wasn’t anticipating.
“Friend of the Bar” – Well that’s an honour!
Can’t wait for my 20% commission.
3.9m last night so it’s holding its audience. Can’t help but think it wouldn’t be if Clarkson wasn’t hosting, but this thought experiment is irrelevant, he is.
Four episodes, five people crashing back to a thousand. This is pretty unheard of for Millionaire really.
I approve of gambling contestants as a rule, that’s where the excitement is. But it’s not paying off for either the contestants or viewers really.
A couple of thoughts I’m pretty sure I’m allowed to give –
1) Clarkson – he really wants this to be a success and I get the impression he likes the idea of being a popular quiz show host. A couple of times he mentioned during the record and backstage to the audience about Pointless in a way that showed he really was a fan. Before I came on for my second show we had a nerve-calming conversation that at least I was on 1K and he mentioned that “You’d have to do a full episode or two of Pointless to that”. I said, well I wouldn’t have to share it, but then he mentioned “Yes, but no coveted trophy though” in a way that fans of the show might. Hey, maybe I’m reading into nothing. I get the impression he is genuinely feeling the pressure of Ask the Host, but relishing it at the same time.
2) Casting – one criticism I’ve come across on looking at Twitter (pretty much my only regret is searching Twitter! Could not cope with being in the public eye for more than 20 minutes I have been) is that only decidedly average quizzers had been selected. I’m not trying to defend myself here – well not totally – however what was clear from meeting fastest finger contestants backstage for three shows I was around for filming for is that I suspect a broad range of expertise was sought (my opinion only, obviously) There were big quizzers there in all three of the recordings I attended who had been involved in quiz leagues for years and the like. The bloke next to me in Contestant’s Row I think had recently turned down The Chase and something else to come on Millionaire – but for whatever reason, so far those quizzers I’m aware of haven’t got past fastest finger.
3) Myself – So it was the first time I’ve ever been on a quiz show, and I suspect the production team had placed me in the “more quizzer than not” section. Part of my intro on tonight’s show was Clarkson asking me if I’m such a quiz buff how do I research for Millionaire. I’m glad this got cut, as I said during the auditions I was a quiz show fan who had never been on one, rather than an expert quizzer which I think are two different things. Got caught out by a total blind spot, but I’m more disappointed that came so early so I didn’t have a chance to progress rather than losing money. You live and learn. Nobody will believe me I’m sure, but I’ve found every £4k question this week far easier than my own. The Brig himself suggested this may be an age thing, this probably plays into it a bit, I’ve struggled to find anyone my age (Early 30s) who has known the answer. My other phone a friend hadn’t a clue either so that was a relief. Out of all the crash down contestants, I suspect I may be the only one so far that probably can’t think of any huge way I would play the game differently given three days afterthought- perhaps not have “wasted” my Ask the Audience so early? But at that stage it felt the right thing to do. I bought into the romance of the Jeremy and Jeremy Clarkson link, that’s that blindspot again.
Anyway, I’m pretty damn sure I wouldn’t have got on if it wasn’t for this website and seeing the application form so early and reading all the decent comments from quiz fans over the years, so long live the Bar!
One thing I forgot to add on the range of contestants – I don’t think it’s been noted that I *think* every show so far has had a 50/50 gender split. It was noted in the green room by those of us that had been watching the old Millionaire on repeat that it was a bit of a sausage fest- for those who got in the chair if nothing else.
Oh you’re early 30s? Had you pegged at mid-20s.
Like a lot of the £4k questions I think on the face of it it felt a bit early, but I think even if you didn’t know St Jude I thought the other saints names sounded a bit ridiculous and modern, but still WELL DONE on representing the Bar, and I thought your reasoning on the Harry Potter question was very good.
At Mid-20’s, you’ve made a slightly older than you thought man very happy haha.
In hindsight you are probably right, it wasn’t until a day later and my fiancee pointed out the Jude/Judas link and the world’s largest penny dropped.
Another fun fact, I think I’m the only person this series so far to walk off and not be greeted by a friend/family as my wife to be had to fly to Uganda overnight. I did have a friend watching show 2, but I think I went off too fast for him to be introduced!
What episode number were you on?
Having caught up with Millionaire now, I feel obliged to share that I happened to know the saint question… because I went to St. Jude’s Infant’s School (now demolished) in Wolverhampton.
In hindsight, I can’t help but feel there’s something a bit off about naming a school after the patron saint of “lost causes”.
A new graphical mess on Tuesday night’s show – on screen for about a third of a second:
https://ibb.co/cQNBg7
First of those I’ve seen this series – strange they bothered creating them if they didn’t intend on using them.
Another slightly interesting thing that Monday’s phone-a-friend let slip to Jeremy: Not only is there a PA at the friend’s home watching every move, they also have a camera pointed at the friend, presumably in case there is ever a dispute over whether cheating occurred.
It’s quite amazing how we’ve gone from ultra cautious civilians in the last series to ultra risk takers in this, still ITV must be ultra pleased only to have to fork out £3,000 during the cursed Tuesday evening slot!
Got to love how Clarkson just says out loud what the entire nation are thinking at the end though!
Also, *that* audience gasp when she gave the wrong answer!
Someone on the TV Forum also raised an interesting point in that the phone a friends aren’t actually told any more how much a question is worth, Tarrant usually told them or if higher up gave the option to tell them or not.
Another 3.9m last night (21%) despite the dreaded Tuesday slot. Grew throughout and peaked at 4.4m (25%).
I think it’s absolutely outperforming expectation at this point, despite pretty much everything.
So I wonder when Jeremy has a spare week free for a second run?
They seem to be picking people who don’t have much basic general knowledge and like a gamble. I guess they didn’t want any big winners not knowing how well it would rate.
I am astonished at some of the things tonights contestants did not know. Surely If you don’t have some basic general knowledge you should not be applying for this.
3.7m Wednesday. Imagine how well it’d be doing if it didn’t just look thrown together. Probably not that much, sadly.
Seven crash-outs in five episodes.
I’ve started pondering the reasons for this, inconsistent question difficulties not withstanding, and I think I’ve come up with three:
1) £8,000 is no longer worth getting out of bed for.
2) Social media has everyone so used to thinking they’re right all the time this now extends to verifyable facts.
3) Most likely, people are so used to quiz apps where you might as well gamble as there’s no real jeopardy they forget they’re playing in real life for real money.
I think also, curiously, not having the milestone at 32k and rather having it “in your pocket” is giving contestants a false sense of security.
I’d also like to know if they’ve gone for risk averse contestants deliberately.
It’s odd with people being cautious on first few questions on things they should know but then being prepared to take a gamble on the bigger money.
Enjoyed tonight, Jeremy actually made me laugh out loud at points. Was half expecting a repeat of 9 January 1999 with the contestants too, shame the second one was a bit too protective of his lifelines.
The editing is still a bit of a mess, especially with the answers being revealed, I was also amazed they squeezed in a fastest finger first at the end only to then sound the klaxon before the contestant had even got started, I’m not actually sure that ever happened in the original Millionaire!
Also a bit of trivia, was there once a contestant on the original run that actually took the money at £32,000 rather than having a no risk guess? Something is playing in the back of my mind!
There was if memory serves at least one occasion where they played fastest finger first immediately before the klaxon. I remember it being a contestant called Tommy because it was the first time I’d ever seen another person called that on TV.
I presume the close to the wire fastest finger was to give a chance to another contestant.Every episode this time round has let as least two contestants per episode play so probably made it fair.
I watched the first four episodes, and thought I was pretty much done with them, being closer to hate-watching by the end, but I saw enough on Twitter (grumble) to suggest that tonight’s episode was worth watching, and it was. I enjoyed it more than the previous ones as Jeremy Clarkson really toned it down and let the game be the star. Jeremy, if you really do want people to win big money, then you’ve got to put them at their ease – and belittling people’s achievements becomes much less befitting when it’s clear how few answers he knows himself. (Perhaps he has realised this himself, or perhaps he’s just been told to dial back, or perhaps the editing is smoother.) Jeremy has got into his rhythm more, though (as so often is the case) a new host shows what an old host did really well subconsciously by virtue of not being quite up to snuff, and the dead air (or the deliberate decision to leave it dead) doesn’t yet feel natural in a way that it did with Chris… at least, until Chris clearly got bored of the show. There is a place for a heel host, but it’s not here; I’d probably watch at least an episode or two of a Jeremy Clarkson Hard Quiz.
On balance, I quite like the floating second lifeline. I thought at first that asking whether or not to put it in place before each question would get irritating and that what the show needs is an interrupt. While game shows don’t often do interrupts well despite them being the easiest thing in the world (I’m looking at you, 19 Keys) I do think that The Weakest Link shows that they can work. In practice, it’s not so bad.
Yes, the graphics are needlessly less good than they could or should have been, but the game remains compelling. I quite like the “20th anniversary” aspect and would quite like a week of shows once per year, maybe with a different host every year, even if the celebration has come four months too early; that said, I fear ITV are too greedy to keep good things special…
I presume that the reason behind the earlyness of the anniversary was due to Jeremy’s busy schedule with Amazon plus September is already quite packed to do an week of anniversaries. They played this quite right they have.
One other thing: the contestants have been very likeable so far and I actually think they have been playing the game well. You might say that it’s inconsistent for a contestant both to be playing well and to crash out losing money, but there’s definitely been evidence of clear thinking in their gameplay far more often than not.
I do hope that one day someone uses their Ask The Host on a very simple question to show Clarkson’s ignorance up and then let Clarkson have both barrels because the contestant knew the answer all along. Wouldn’t be gameplay optimal, would be good TV.
We’re all a lot more cynical than we were 20 years ago, and the cynic in me wonders: Was tonight’s £125k question in the stack deliberately?
The possibility occurs to me because, even though the show is now full of disclaimers everywhere (“I’m not on Google,” “I don’t have an earpiece”), there’s no mention made of whether question stacks are picked at random from a pool, whether each stack is kept as a full unit or individual questions are picked at each level, or whether they’re given in a set order … or whether they’re written for each possible contestant (which wouldn’t be such a big deal, now with only six FFF players instead of 10).
Yes, that’s way, way out there, and I can’t possibly imagine it actually being true … but who would have believed anything could ever be not completely COUGH on the COUGH level with Millionaire?
My gut says if they were going to do something like that they wouldn’t have waited for the £125k question to do so, especially given the way this week has panned out.
Similarly everyone seemed to be expecting some sort of motoring question in each of the stacks to Ask the Host about, but this hasn’t actually happened.
The Electoral Reform Services are the independent adjudicators, if anyone’s interested.
There WAS a motoring question! Remember the struggle (!) Clarkson had with the octagonal stop sign?
On the same tip, it was interesting that Clarkson mentioned – during the Magritte question – that he was useless on art, with the possible exception of Turner, and a Turner question turned up later in the week. Not saying it’s a fix, just thought it was interesting.
The week is over… just at the point Clarkson was clearly completely getting into the swing of it.
If the Bar Collective does nothing else for the next six months, can we at least try and get in touch with someone on the production who can tell us why Arial when Sun Copperplate? I am still struggling to sleep thinking about it, let alone find a single friend, colleague or family member who I can actually convince to care.
It’s both immensely disappointing and yet we all know it won’t affect the ratings by one jot.
The fact that the money on the background screen when they cash out is in Copperplate compounds the confusion.
I know there’s reasons why, but I’m disappointed Verdana didn’t hit the deck in the design jiggle. Nothing says “classy, upscale quiz” than the font you use for PowerPoint. Hey ho.
That ibex question felt like a trick question to me!
Anyone else think so?
I wouldn’t say it was a trick question in the true sense.
A trick question would be more like;
What is The Ibex.
A. Deer B. stock exchange
4.7m (25%) last night. Nice figure to end on. Grew throughout again to peak at 5.4m (29%) at the end. Seems safe to say it’ll be back.
Can I ask who designed the set?
Patrick Doherty – very experienced designer who did Strictly Come Dancing, Saturday Night Takeaway and many others. http://www.pdohertydesign.com/
Thanks, just that I know Andy Walmsley did the original and from tuning in occasionally to the revival I wanted to know who updated the set.
Cheers,
Aaron.
It should be back, but only as specials or once a year as a treat.
OK, now that I’ve finally caught up on the series, here’s my thoughts on the WWTBAM series. Warning – contains some light statistical analysis.
http://danielpeake.com/blog1/2018/05/15/who-wants-to-be-a-statistician/
I should probably lay out my main findings:
People aren’t using the Ask The Audience lifeline correctly
Moveable milestone caters for both conservative and riskier players (this is good)
People seem to be taking more risks these day (as Brig’s already pointed out)
One question I’ve been mulling over is that there weer a number of people who had the approach of “I’ve got lifelines in hand, so let’s not set the milestone yet”. I’ve been wondering if it’s a better philosophy – assuming you’re already going deep – to set the milestone *before* using up your most powerful lifelines. It’s perhaps of too small a sample size, but I’m curious of the people who set the milestone but didn’t get to it, how many of them didn’t have lifelines to assist them in making that step?
Good question!
The people who didn’t achieve the milestone had the following number of lifelines remaining when they set their lifeline: 0, 0, 2, 1, 1 (average: 0.8)
The people who DID achieve the milestone had the following number of lifelines remaining: 3, 2, 2, 2 (average 2.25)
Small sample sizes, but I think you’ve hit upon a key point, and I’ll likely add that into the blog post when I have a couple of minutes. Thanks, MC!
Wow, have you seen the new USA Millionaire graphics in action? They’re an eyesore, like something Runway would’ve used in 1992.
The bit where the cash amount zooms into the screen after a right answer is hilarious.
I think they tried for ‘clean’ and instead got ‘boring’, although *whisper it* I don’t mind the look of the money ladder.
Also I loved Buzzerblog’s observation that the Millionaire bit isn’t quite centred on the main graphic, the sort of thing once you see you can’t unsee.